Kithflicks | Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan

Knee-buckling oriental perfumes and the Eastern woman's natural grace and rhythm in general are big topics this week, though I found the breezy Aunt Nadia's [from Kith by P.H. Newby] attractions more convincing than those of Yukiko, the subject of Richard Brautigan's canton of contemned love. Sombrero Fallout offsets a love story almost medieval in its sentimental idolatry with a fantasy about a UFO - the sombrero of the title - that manages to produce a small civil war in ten easy stages. Brautigan's comic touch is predictably unerring and the hilarious narrative development is studded with wry surreal gags ('He never lacked things to worry about ... If he taught all his worries to sing, they would have made the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sound like a potato.') The Yukiko bits, though, kept reminding me of that sticky moment in every variety show when the lights go pink and the compÃ¨re flattens his hair, shoots his cuffs, slips the mike out of its stand and huskily lets rip on 'You Made Me Love You'.

Note: The above is an excerpt from a longer article which includes reviews of Kith by P.H. Newby, Sombrero Fallout by Richard Brautigan, The Painter of Signs by R.K. Narayan and Nobody's Fault by Mervyn Jones.

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